Existing User

The process is easy to describe, actually the title says
it all: Kauf/Verkauf von Gegendständen aus Haus Lange und Haus
Esters (Buying and Selling Objects from Haus Lange and
Haus Esters). On a particular occasion in a particular place a
number of objects found in that place are put up for
sale.

The artist arranges an exchange of goods for money; a mechanism
is set in motion which could hardly be more trivial or more basic;
a small segment of the dominant economy plays itself out. Dryly and
succinctly the offer is outlined, the prices are named and the
conditions are laid down. Objects and money change hands and the
transactions are recorded in the books. A sequence of events comes
to a predictable conclusion.

But not quite, for this banal procedure has a life of its own;
what's more, this is just the beginning. This cameo of commercial
life is completely real, and yet behind the neutrality of the
exchange there is a different kind of transaction. The title which
tells of buying and selling is not in itself the work; it merely
outlines the concept that we are dealing with here, and which may
be observed in this place and time. The fact is, that right from
the outset this transaction is happening in conditions that draw
particular attention to the extraneous circumstances. It is
immediately obvious from the proposed sale and the intending vendor
that this is an everyday procedure in an unusual place, which in
turn raises unexpected questions about the meaning of both.

The process: on the occasion of the group exhibition
'Niemandsland' in Haus Lange and Haus Esters (1997) a

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